Accounting History

The schism between accounting practice and the accounting academy has been a lament of accountants for many decades. This schism has two aspects – the schism between research and practice and the schism between education and practice. This article focuses on the later schism and uses a statistical approach to compare the dates of introduction of new management accounting concepts into accounting education and the professional body of knowledge over the period 1967 to 1997. The results indicate that, on average, accounting education lags practice and the length of the lag has increased since the early 1980s. The study contributes to the growing use of cliometrics (quantitative analysis) in accounting history, provides new empirical data on the accounting schism and offers insights for the profession and academy on the pattern of knowledge transfer. The use of new sources and a different research method offer additional insights on the established themes of “relevance lost” and the “accounting lag” in the management accounting and accounting history literatures.

Building upon panel discussion held at the sixth Accounting History International Conference, a resounding “yes” is offered in response to the question of whether accounting history matters. However, reflecting the viewpoint that accounting history can and should matter more, various suggestions are presented for advancing the quality, relevance and significance of historical research in accounting, commencing with the need to redress persistent misconceptions about the discipline. Practical strategies for enhancing the impact of accounting history scholarship are then developed around the themes of promoting its contemporary relevance and implications, fostering engagement with diverse groups of scholars, writing accounting history in informative and engaging ways, and articulating and developing appropriate methodologies. Finally, the role of accounting historians as “change agents” is explored and advocated.

Attempts by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) to standardize oil and gas accounting in the 1970s has been referred to as the “most politicised accounting argument ever” (Van Riper, 1994, p.56). Marking the only instance in which the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has declined to support the FASB’s standards, the failure of the FASB to limit accounting method choice has had lasting implications with divergent methods still practised by oil and gas companies today. This study presents a narrative of this development and specifically examines the events through the lens of regulatory capture theory to show that the industry was successful in capturing the regulatory process and securing its preferred outcome.

This paper examines the financial crisis of 2007–9 in the UK and US in terms of the financial instability hypothesis (FIH), a theory of boom, bust and financial crises. It is shown that in a similar way to the crises of 1866 and 1987 (Barnes, 2007) the FIH provides an important depiction of the 2007–9 crisis and how it came about. However, it does not recognize: (1) the role of accounting information and how it may contribute to boom and bust and be used to change perceptions and mislead; and (2) the likelihood of fraud and financial swindles, all features of the 2007–9 crisis.

This paper documents the history of paternalistic state policies and the effects of asbestos mining on the Indigenous community at Baryulgil in northern New South Wales. Despite the lack of profitability, the asbestos operations continued for over 30 years leaving a legacy of asbestos-related health and environmental issues. The shift of responsibility for Indigenous welfare from the State to a corporate entity is evidenced in this historical study using the lens of historical institutionalism. The Baryulgil case is instructive in a number of ways: it demonstrates the subtlety with which human rights abuses can occur in an environment where paternalistic attitudes towards Indigenous peoples prevail; it demonstrates the clash between pursuit of corporate objectives and human rights; and finally it demonstrates the lack of corporate accountability in the asbestos industry.

This paper details the preparation, structure, uses and availability of a database (known as Summa DB) which collects and codifies many aspects of the accounting history literature contributed by Italian authors. There are a total of 1,253 units of analysis: 1,197 Italian language publications printed from 1861 to 2010, and 56 international articles and books printed from 1976 to 2010. For each publication, the data collected includes the date and type of publication, the period studied, the accounting history field, sources of data, the affiliations of the authors, and the accounting methods examined. The aim of this paper is to show how Summa DB can provide researchers with multidimensional data which can assist in solving some problems emerging from applying the “Comparative International Accounting History” (CIAH) perspective.